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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
My menial job at a world-famous Washington resort was a crash course in today's screw-the-worker zeitgeist -- and the charming, monied guests who thrust bloody bandages into my hands and made my dignified old co-worker perform like a seal.
Apr 28, 2004 | I've always thought of myself as a winner. Then, last year, my outlook on the world was dramatically altered by the "jobless recovery." I was laid off from a directorship at a prestigious nonprofit due to an economy-related funding shortfall. I found myself stranded in a remote arts community, unable to locate work with comparable duties or salary, either in town or in the nearest city, two hours away. My local area had only one other significant employer, a world-famous hotel and resort catering primarily to the Washington elite, as well as conservative money from around the world.
I felt backed into a corner, but knew I had to take responsibility for my family's declining finances. I bit the bullet and applied for the only position available to me: as a waitress serving millionaire politicians and billionaire CEOs. During a season working at this playground for the well-heeled set, I received a crash course on what it means to go from a quality job to one of the newly made service-industry jobs so often touted by our leaders as replacements.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some pampered Cinderella stepsister who suddenly had her charge cards yanked away and had to do her first honest day of toil. I've held survival jobs before and this was not my first stint as a waitress. As recently as 2000, the "new economy" threw me for a loop that required a tough scramble for employment. I believed I knew what to expect when I fell back to the lower rungs.
But this job was different. I discovered life at the bottom surprisingly altered in just the short time between the end of the dot-com boom and the present, and I found my employer to be the perfect embodiment of an ongoing shift in corporate culture. Policies at the resort were indicative of changes that are transpiring at companies across the country. Wring every minute of work you can out of your employees without paying them for it. Increase profits and cut costs at their expense. Keep low-wage employees solidly in their place.
After applying, I was fingerprinted to rule out criminal activity in my past. Two distressingly large locks of my hair were snipped from my head for drug testing. My blood was drawn, and I was X-rayed in case I had TB.
Then came orientation. Human Resources handed us a demoralizing set of rules that nearly all the resort's more than 1,200 employees had to follow, excluding midlevel and top management. Employees weren't allowed to eat in any of the hotel's restaurants or to use any of its facilities, whether or not we could pay for them. We couldn't vacation there for an hour, let alone a week, couldn't have our hair cut by the salon, bowl in the bowling alley, swim in the swimming pools, buy a movie ticket, partake of the restorative waters in the spa, or be seen on the grounds when not on shift. Guests often asked me what the food tasted like. I had no idea.
"We don't want our guests to be confused or their experience here compromised," went the official explanation for these rules.
Just one exception to these rules existed. We could shop in a small corridor of stores on the bottom floor, but only if we dressed ourselves in attire similar to that of the clientele we served. I tried this once and felt painfully exposed after managers on duty spotted me and carefully followed my progress from shop to shop. I guess my Ann Taylor slacks and Coach bag didn't cut it.
